Joe Lansdale - Devil Red

Vanilla shook her head slowly. “No. It won’t work out for you.”

“Just tell me where to find them and when.”

“I don’t know when, and I won’t tell you where.”

“You think I can’t find out where they live? If I can’t do it myself, I have friends who can. I’ll find them. I’m asking you to speed up matters.”

“I’m not one to betray.”

“They betrayed you,” I said. “They took a child and made a killer. You may not think that matters now, but maybe some part of you knows that isn’t the life you had to have. It can’t be that good a life.”

I watched her face. It revealed nothing.

“It was you who got snookered, baby,” I said. “The fact you came to me means you feel something other than professionalism. And if you think you’re helping me by not telling me where they are, all you’re doing is giving me a reprieve. They’ll get to me eventually. At some point, it’ll be me and them.”

“Run.”

“I’m not into running.”

“Man’s got to do what a man’s go to do, huh?” Vanilla said.

“Something like that. If you’re not going to help me, then leave and let me get about my business. And thanks for the warning.”

Vanilla set the diet soda can on the coffee table, careful to make it fit into one of Brett’s coasters. “Do you have weapons?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“They certainly do. And they probably have at least two bodyguards on the grounds. Maybe more. And dogs.”

“Dogs.”

She nodded. “Yep. And a security camera.”

“Oh, good. And do the Mummy and the Wolf Man work for them too?”

“There you’re safe.”

“That’s a relief.”

“And consider this. They may or may not be home. If they were here earlier, it would take them almost two hours to go back to the estate. It’s on this side of Houston. In the woods. A hundred acres or so. They would be there by now if they went home. But you don’t know. It’s a gamble.”

“What isn’t,” I said. “You gonna help me, or not?”

“Get a pen and paper,” she said, “and I’ll draw you a map. But when I do, it’s like me signing your death warrant.”

Not long after that cheery little comment from Vanilla, I had warm clothes on, including a wool cap, the heater turned up, and my foot heavy on the gas pedal. I had a thermos of coffee and a tuna fish sandwich in a plastic bag on the seat beside me. Brett’s revolver was holstered on my hip. In the glove box was my. 38 Super. In the trunk, the twelve-gauge pump and ammunition for all three weapons. Also there was a toolbox with a pair of snips in it and some other things I needed. I had my clasp knife in my pocket and a roll of breath mints so as not to offend anyone I might want to stab or shoot. Marvin’s sawed-off I had left at the house, replaced by my own twelve-gauge. Call me sentimental. I preferred my own gun.

Outside the air was damp with a cold mist, and the highway in the beam of the headlights looked like a ribbon of blue steel. It was late and the road was oddly empty, as if while Vanilla and I talked there had been some kind of apocalypse.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around what Vanilla had told me, and there were parts of my brain that doubted what I heard. For all I knew she was setting me up. But that didn’t make a lot of sense. If she wanted me dead, she would have done it. I’d have had a bullet up my ass while I was still trying to find my house key. Not to mention that since she suspected a bomb, she could have just let it go off and they would have found my pecker in a tree the next day. And when I came downstairs from fetching my guns, she was gone, and she had taken the bombs with her.

A tidy cleanup for someone who would want me dead. And if she was using me to take out the competition, so far I wasn’t proving to be that good. Neither was Leonard. A bag of crackers and cookies had got him shot, maybe killed, and Vanilla had snuck up on me while I was on my porch about to unlock a door that would have blown me apart.

I decided to believe she was on my side. I also thought maybe she had arrived at the house by means of teleportation. Where was her car? And after she had drawn the map, and I had gathered up my weapons and ammunition, how did she get out and gone so quickly, without making a sound?

That girl was creepy.

No more slacking. No more being distracted. No more feeling sorry for myself. Tonight, I had to be back on my game, like the old days.

I called Brett and asked how Leonard was doing.

“Same ole, same ole,” she said. “You on the road, baby?”

“Yes.”

“For reasons discussed?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“That was quick.”

“I had some help.”

“Help?”

Brett knew about Vanilla Ride, and what she knew about her she didn’t like, so I decided not to mention her.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said. “At some point I’m going to cut off my phone. Not for a while, but in the next couple of hours.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“Always careful,” I said. “Take care of Leonard.”

“You’ll be back to do it.”

I hesitated. “You’ll take care of him, right?”

“You know it,” she said.

When I finished with Brett, I called Marvin.

“I need you at the hospital. To watch Brett. To make sure she and Leonard are okay. I know I told you to sleep, but-”

“Say no more. I’m on my way.”

“Marvin… I know what happened. I know who did it.”

“Wait until you’re not so steamed up, Hap. You know who it is tonight, you’ll know who it is tomorrow, and you can put a plan together. Right now you’re acting on anger.”

“I am at that.”

“Cool some.”

“Now’s the time,” I said.

“Tomorrow we can get Jim Bob. Me. My leg is better. I’m sort of up to it now.”

“No you’re not.”

“You’re gonna hurt my feelin’s, Hap.”

“Right now I don’t have room for that, my friend. I’m tellin’ it like it is. You’re not up to it, and I’m not waiting. And I don’t want to pull you or Jim Bob or anyone else into this. At least not directly. This is goddamn personal. And they don’t expect me to come to them. That’s the only edge I got. That and knowing you’re there with Brett and Leonard.”

“Who are they?” Marvin asked. “Who are them?”

“I told a certain someone that if I didn’t come back, they were to let you know what happened.”

“Who’s that certain someone?”

“You’ll know if I don’t come back.”

It was a promise Vanilla had made me before I went upstairs to get the guns. If I didn’t come back, she’d let Marvin and Brett know, warn them that Devil Red would be after them. I hoped they were smarter than me. I hoped they’d take Vanilla’s advice and run. I hoped she would keep her word. I was pretty certain she would.

Marvin said, “You sound a little dramatic.”

“I feel a little dramatic,” I said.

I heard Marvin sigh. “You doing something like whatever the hell you’re doing, and Leonard not being there… Man, that don’t seem right. I can’t think of one of you without the other. It’s like Siamese twins have been halved.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

It had started to snow. Real snow. Highly unusual for East Texas. The flakes were huge, like cotton balls. Normally snow in this area was little more than flakes that barely stuck and lasted about as long as it took to melt one on your tongue. If I hadn’t been on a mission to blow people’s brains out, I might have enjoyed its uniqueness and beauty. Right now, it was nothing more than a hindrance.

I wasn’t far from where I wanted to go. There was a rest stop nearby and I pulled in there and tried to eat the sandwich because I thought I was crazy hungry, but it just turned out I was crazy scared. I drank a cup of coffee, slowly, because my hands were trembling. I turned on my overhead light and looked at the map Vanilla had drawn on a piece of paper. I studied it. I was close. I was very close. I turned off the light and sat and thought, and it seemed as if the trees in the roadside park were drawing nearer to me, as if the darkness between them were gathering together into something solid and demonic, trimmed in snow and ice.